1a. If you must use a computer screen before bed, install F.lux (http://stereopsis.com/flux/). As the sun goes down, Flux adjusts the color warmth of your monitor to make it friendly as sunlight diminishes.

It takes a little to get used to, but its completely awesome once you are using it. When you disable it during the night and see your monitor jump to a bright, blinding blue shade you realize how painful it is on your eyes.

Wow great find. Thanks!

Excellent point on determining a "sweet spot" and waking up at the same time everyday.

It's a lot of work to get on a normal sleeping pattern but it can be done. I slept inconsistently for 15 years and, after ~1 year of reprogramming the habit, have been able to get consistently good sleep. The productivity boost has been phenomenal since then and it has been absolutely worthwhile.

My most important habits are:

1) Sleep when tired at night - sounds obvious but you'd be shocked at how often we fight it. Don't nap. Just get to the evening and sleep early if you need to.

2) Wake up and get out of bed at the same time everyday - get your body in a pattern. This is critical. If you consider staying in bed once you wake up, you will fall asleep and train yourself to roll around in the morning. If you force yourself up and start moving, you'll be wide awake in a few minutes. One week of this the habit will begin to form. Avoid alcohol and late nights to get this habit rolling.

3) Do the same thing every night before you sleep -condition your body to expect sleep. Reading fiction for 15 minutes has been a good tool for me (avoid tasks like checking email that keep your mind active, the whole point is to ease into sleep!)

Be wary of polyphasic sleep! I tried this and the first week resulted in massive sleep deprivation that took a heavy toll on productivity (serious IQ and attention span dip. zombies are stupid) and ended with a massive crash and hibernate period.

You're right to think about sleep. If you can get this down, you'll be much more productive. You might also need to lessen your big load of responsibilities or get help from someone else if the time demands are too high.

Best of luck. I'm rooting for you.

Good tips, some quibbles and additional points.

I'm a very regular sleeper and have been for about a decade (I'm now 41). Fixing sleeping routines I think is the most important part of that; getting a decent bedroom has also been important. Three most important things: no light, no noise, and good air. Move away from a noisy street; heavy blackout curtains over an open window will help with the rest. Blackout curtains seem to be less common in the States than in Europe: do track them down if you haven't got them.

Caffeine: I'm quite happy drinking tea as my bedtime drink. Coffe, though, keeps me awake. I have no idea why, since the caffeine levels are about the same. I try to minimise my coffee consumption over the week.

Artificial lighting is a good point, artificial heating and air circulation I also find to be bad for your body's self-regulation. Up to a point, I think these things matter more than diet. I like to work in a cold office with warm clothes.

Polyphasic sleep: It's interesting, but I think that Dustin Curtis only find it works better than normal sleep because he is unable to establish a routine that works for him. otherwise.

I drink tea before bed as well. Usually decaf green or rooibos. Interesting thing about rooibos is that it gives me super intense and vivid dreams, and i wake up ridiculously refreshed.

Finding time to sleep is also very difficult for me, I'm involved in the machine learning course on Stanford, work a daytime job as a software engineer, have 3 sideprojects running, try to help my girlfriend in the household and try to spend as much attention on her as possible, plus we have a baby on the way. The time spent after hours (which make me stay up that late) doesn't generate a direct income either, so it doesn't get rewarded immediately. The result of this is that I slept 10 hours previous 3 nights combined and my eye keeps twitching because my body knows it's tired, but my brain doesn't because of the caffeine. Firefoxman has some very good tips, I'm going to try to apply them, what I did try to do until now though is tracking my 'sleep' time with timeclover android app. When I go to sleep, push a button, wake up, push buttuon, so at least I know how much I slept and how I feel about that. I'm going to try to combine them both.